Career advice

[GTV]

Hi all,


Hope you are all well.


I was hoping forum members can share some advice in regards to my next career move. Given that there are many hiring managers on this forum, it would be the best place to ask to get your thoughts and views.


To give you some background, I am a trainee chartered accountant in the UK. I have already time qualified with my training file completely signed off but just need to exam qualify, and the earliest this can be done by is August 2020. This will mean I will be fully qualified by August 2020 if I pass the remaining exams. My current issue is that last month I was told I was being made redundant and unfortunately there were no finance roles at my level in the business, that I could apply for. I was offered a non-finance role but decided to reject this, as I want to progress my career in finance. Given that the company I worked for is currently cutting costs, it means it's very unlikely a role at my level will come up soon if I decided to take the non-finance role short term to then move internally into a core finance function role. I therefore thought it was best in this case to take the redundancy and move on.


After taking the decision to leave the business, I am currently in a dilemma as to whether I should finish off the final three exams I have remaining, stay unemployed and then look for a role ? Or should I be securing a job as soon as possible as having a gap in my CV of 7 - 8 months, would work against me when applying for jobs later.


I can comfortably support myself financially over the coming months and my previous employer has covered all my study support fees. Any advice


Any advice would be appreciated.


Thanks

 

[GTV]

Yes of course. I guess the other issue is that I'm not sure if starting a new job in a new company immediately is a good idea. For example, starting a job in April/May might be difficult as I will be preparing for my final exams in July and learning a new role. Also, I study the ACA, which is taught on day release, rather than evening and weekends. My previous employers has paid for all of these courses so it would be a shame to just let it go and waste it away.

Taking this all into consideration I am leaning towards looking for a job closer to a August start date in a few months, just trying to find out if looking at my whole story, is it all justifiable to have this potential long gap on my CV of 6-7 months ?

 

[GTV]

Yes of course completely agree but if I did just take these extra few months off, I'm certain to get through these last few exams and keep first time passes. By taking a job at any point between now and July means I have that extra burden of going to work during the day and then studying evenings and weekends, which I'm fine with if I was at my previous employer but when working somewhere new, there's that extra expectation at work to perform to a higher standard but then you're also conscious you need be home at a reasonable time to study. Given that these are the final exams and longest, it will require a lot of time and taking some annual leave too to study at home if I was working too.

 

[GTV]

As in the point that I'm also making was that I was forced into this situation by my previous employer. It's not common for a trainee to lose their job via redundancy. I also only had a months notice, which is not long enough to have secured the right role in another company. Considering my courses are due to start soon, if I were to start with a new employer, it will make it difficult to start a new role challenging role and complete exams. Most trainees at my current stage would have been doing their roles for three years, so would you not think any future hiring manager would think that it's actually understand and not have a problem with the gap in the CV. I'd already passed my previous 12 exams first time, whilst working, so I thought completing exams and working simultaneously was never an issue for me. I just currently find myself in an unfortunate situation which my employer put me in.